


Accepting Yourself

by lamentingpat



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Frank Castle, Character Study, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25012108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamentingpat/pseuds/lamentingpat
Summary: Frank Castle knows who he is. It took him decades, but now he finally does. But it took two friends, a kid, and a pain in his ass for him to finally admit it. Apparently confessing on a roof at a stakeout is a good way to talk about your emotions and think about your past.
Relationships: Frank Castle & Karen Page, Frank Castle & Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker & Wade Wilson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	Accepting Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> I pushed my hardest to get this out during pride, but I was late (by literal minutes). I had fun writing this despite the heavy content, as I think Frank has a very interesting perspective on sexual identity. That being said, major trigger warning for some pretty blatant homophobia. And yes, my gay ass looked up an anti-gay sermon transcript to write part of this.

Nothing. Almost five hours and nothing had happened yet. To say that Frank was frustrated would be an understatement, but he can’t exactly get angry with the people he was with, especially since one was possibly more trigger happy than he was. 

It had been a mistake to say yes to helping Red with his drug cartel sting, but it’s hard to not be persuaded by the silver-tongued lawyer. Goddamn lawyers always had a way with their words, it made them sneaky bastards, which Red definitely was. It had been too late when he arrived and saw Wade and the kid in the spandex who still refused to tell Frank his name. Sure, he killed people but he wasn’t going to kill a kid, he wasn’t a monster. Well, at least not that much of a monster. 

He really regretted it when Wade opened his big mouth. He had finally shut up thirty minutes ago after he and Matt had tussled a bit and the former had landed a good hit to Wade’s jaw with his billy club. He had been left to sulk, and finally seemed to be over it. Frank resisted the urge to punch him or even worse, he had learned early on that Wade could take a bullet to the nuts and be fine. 

“Today’s June 1st! You going to Pride this year Bug Boy? What about you Magoo?” How the kid put up with him, Frank would never know. He couldn’t help but let out a quiet snort at the name he called Red. No wonder the guy got clocked earlier. Wade and the kid struck Frank as people who would go to Pride even if they were straight, but he’d overheard too many comments about various people Wade found attractive to think he was straight. The kid was less direct, and for some reason, the group of red jolly ranchers parading as heroes thought he didn’t listen in to what they said. He’d overheard the kid ask Red for advice about asking out his friend Ned. Frank wouldn’t have gone to Matt for that, but high school relationships were hard and you didn’t want to ask Wade about shit like that. 

Matt though? Frank wouldn’t think he would attend. It wasn’t a secret that Red was Catholic, everything about him screamed ‘ _I have a guilt complex that consumes my everyday life’_. Maybe he just saw it because he was raised in the same environment, well, sort of. There were variations, they didn’t attend the same church, and Frank wasn’t raised partially by nuns like Matt was. One thing that he knew that they both knew was the guilt that was associated with anything that would be considered a sin or immoral. The worst for him was the father knowing what he had done wrong, the fact that they _knew_ reminded him constantly of what he had done. He wouldn’t be surprised if Matt felt a little like that.   
  
“I’m going! Probably in the suit though…” The kid’s voiced cracked when he had said he was going, probably from excitement but also possibly because he looked over at Wade, who was right next to Frank. Was he that intimidating to the kid? He caught a small smile on Red’s face before he looked over to Frank, who averted his gaze back to what they were supposed to be there for. Still nothing. Looks like the conversation would continue for now and he knew it would likely end up with Wade prying at him too much. He didn’t need that. Frank didn’t want to think about his place in that right now, especially not to Wade, Matt, or the kid. He really should call him something else than ‘the kid’ and like hell was Frank going to call him some ridiculous name that Wade dreamed up. 

“I’m going with Foggy and Karen most likely. Depends if we can get the day off, but hopefully we can go this year, last year was the whole Kingpin case. I guess trying to take my life was too easy, he had to take pride from us too.”   
  
Oh. _Oh_. Frank felt his mind racing faster than it usually did, causing his heartbeat to spike slightly, and he _knew_ that Red could tell but at this point, yet he couldn’t give less of a collective shit about it. Was Matt not straight or was he there supporting Karen or Foggy? Karen wasn’t straight, he knew that, but Foggy? It was possible, but he didn’t really know him that well except for the brief time that the guy represented him along with Red in court. Not exactly the best basis to gauge that, but maybe?   
  


“Frank, are you alright?” Matt’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts immediately, his face contorting into a scowl as he tried to backpedal any emotions that Wade or the kid might have seen that Matt had picked up on. Frank wasn’t exactly known for how well he expressed his emotions. Hell, he was probably worse at it than Red was, and he was the practicing Catholic in the ragtag group. But past experiences never leave you. At least not for Frank. 

“No.” 

_ Frank’s parents were older than his peers, and not just that, they were strict Italian Catholic immigrants, who tried to raise their rowdy son to be the perfect Catholic son. Not only was he reminded from his old school parents of what he should and shouldn’t be, but it was also pounded in even more by the biweekly visit to the church that eventually turned to even more frequent as he was talked into being an altar boy in exchange for a BB gun. He got that BB gun but at the price of hearing a sermon that still troubles him to this day, even though he wasn’t just a kid anymore.  _

_“Human nature is that of sin, as it has been since Adam and Eve left the garden on Eden, but in this sin, there are few who have repented and let god into their heart. And those who live a life of sodomy and sin can repent and be washed of their sins. The homosexual is one of those people, one who believes that they are made that way, but that is not in the image of God. For too long the godless and misguided Christians have perverted the minds of our children and weak-willed adults in our community._ _  
__  
_ _“First Corinthians chapter six, verse nine: ‘Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God’. They can be saved but they have to be reached by us, the true followers of God. Join me in our mission, send your friends and family here, we can arrange a spiritual meeting to help them work with those unholy thoughts and beliefs. We must accept them with open arms and hearts for them to become what God created them to be.”_

_ Applause. Loud and thunderous enough that it sent an awful chill down his spine, and his stomach sunk but he would never say why to any soul. He was fifteen, only halfway through his freshman year in high school. He was apart of the school’s football team, where they regularly practiced together inside and out, often in various states of dress depending on the weather. This wouldn’t really be a problem but it  _ **_was_ ** _. Frank found his eyes falling where it shouldn’t be, looking at his teammates in ways a guy shouldn’t look at other guys. Was he like what the Father had been talking about? He couldn’t be, he liked girls. Frank looked at the cheerleaders just like the other player did, he just… sometimes looked at them too.  _

_He wasn’t going to do that anymore. He wasn’t gay, and he certainly wasn’t a… sinner. He also didn’t want the Father to get involved, he would just keep it to himself and hope it went away. It was probably just puberty or whatever. Frank also didn’t want to tell his parents. They were old school and they would think of him very differently. Gay people were effeminate, weak, nothing like what Mario had raised his only son to be. Frank wasn’t like that. He would never be like that._ _  
__  
_ “No? What do you mean no?” Red questioned, bringing Frank back to the present back from when he was fifteen. Shit. What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t really meant to be honest to the three he had been forced to work alongside. If it was Matt, he might have been honest, but not with the others. He wasn’t exactly the most… open person and he wasn’t about to just spill his entire inner thoughts and history to them just because he slipped up.   
  
“I was… talking about going to pride. I’m not going,” Frank tried his best to recover but only garnered longer stares from the group. They hadn’t been talking to him and he knew that, but at the very least he knew that Matt would know that he wasn’t lying. Well, not completely. His fight was not to be with Matt, but the most abrasive of the group. 

Just as he predicted, Wade decided to open his mouth. “We’ve never talked about you Frankiedoodle! So, are you saying you’re not going because you’re straight or ‘cause you don’t want to go due to crippling internalized homophobia?” Wade was fucking lucky he couldn’t die because if he could Frank would have killed him ten times over. But could he allow himself to react? That would surely get a reaction from Wade if not the others. The last thing he needed was that.   
  
_Reaction. That was the best word to put when he saw how his fellow recruits berated and attacked one of their own, and he had to turn a blind eye. That recruit was discharged the next day for one reason only: he was gay. Frank had been able to hide his ever shameful persistent thoughts about men, but they didn’t stop. That’s why he had dropped out of seminary school and instead joined the Marines, which made his father equally as proud. ‘Castle men are built tough’ always echoed in his ears at the thought. The military, especially the Marines were not kind to any sort of nonconformity unless it was due to talent in certain fields. Frank only showed his skill, and soon found himself launched into higher-ranking positions. He rarely left the base, but after being in training for a few months, he returned to Queens to visit his aging parents. He had thought nothing of the trip, nothing more than visiting them before he had to return to training._ _  
  
_

_ But it had turned out to be more than that. He had met Maria, the love of his life. They had moved fast, but that was pretty common for guys in the military. Unlike some of them though, he truly loved her and he was so glad she had agreed to go on a date with him in the first place. Time flew, and soon he had to be back at the base but Maria went with him. Unfortunately, not all things leave with a change like that. At times, Frank felt crushing guilt whenever he had… less than desirable thoughts about a man. He had a girlfriend for chrissake, and soon it was a fiancée. It took him a while to even accept that he had these thoughts, but finally, he brought it up to Maria.  _

_ He had thought he would receive a bad reaction like breaking up, a slap,  _ **_something_ ** _. But Maria wasn’t like that, and she didn’t react like that. Surprising as they came from similar backgrounds, but she clearly turned out more open-minded than her parents. Rather than scream or fight, they sat down and talked like adults, which they were, and it somehow went well. And their life went on, but Frank still grappled with his own feelings with his sexuality. He wondered if there was a word for both, he’d really only heard straight and gay. Not that he needed a term, he was just confused. He was straight and he loved his wife.  _

_ That view was only cemented when his children were born and when he was overseas. It was better just to shove it down. He had a lot more pressing things to deal with rather than think about how sometimes he thought of men in a more than friendly way. Yet it seemed at the worst moments it would come to mind, making whatever he was already contemplating worse. It really reached a head on his last tour. He felt guilty about what he was doing. It was  _ **_wrong_ ** _. They needed to stop, yet how could Frank say anything when he didn’t even really know himself? So he kept his head down until he got back home.  _

_ He didn’t think about it again until almost a year after the incident at Central Park. Frank was still mourning the loss of his kids and his wife, the woman who was supposed to be the love of his life. And yet, he caught himself looking at someone one day, feeling a stirring in his chest that hadn’t happened since he first saw Maria. The immediate feeling that followed was disgust. How could he feel like that? It was like he was betraying her, and what made it worse was that it was a man. He… wasn’t gay. He wasn’t gay.  _

_ Only a few years later he found out that there was more than just gay and straight. Ironically, Karen had told him. Much to Foggy and Matt’s chagrin, she had called him in for a little help with a case she had been working on for one of their clients. It was pretty routine until a little flag on Karen’s desk caught his eye. He had never noticed it before really.  _

_ Unluckily for him, Karen was preceptive and could read Frank like an open book. “That’s my bi flag. I can’t go to Pride this year due to the Kingpin case, so I wanted to show off a little bit,” Frank knew he looked confused. He had no clue what the fuck bi meant except as a prefix. He would admit, he knew pitifully little about anything that had to do with sexualities other than gay and straight. He had never really thought that it was that important for him to learn.  _ _  
  
_

_ “You don’t know what that is, do you?” Karen paused, looking him in the eye. He didn’t need to respond for her to know his answer. “Bi is short for Bisexual. It means I like both, not just guys or girls, well, it’s a bit more complicated than that but in simplest terms, that’s kinda what it is.”  _

_ Frank couldn’t help but respond. “That’s a thing?” So could he be…? He wasn’t just weird. Karen was like him, well, sort of. In a way, he found it comforting. For the longest time, he thought his situation was unique and that he was alone. But he wasn’t. He had Karen. Karen wasn’t a bad person, far from it, really. Good people could be like that. Smart people. Tough people.  _

_ “Yeah, it is. You?” She raised an eyebrow at him. Damn Karen and her goddamn perception skills. Frank took a deep breath in, collecting himself and trying his best to shut up his thoughts. He didn’t need them right now.  _

_ “Yeah. I… I am.”  _

Frank turned his head so fast you would have thought he gave himself whiplash. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” He said more loudly than he should have. Frank saw the kid out of the corner of his eye shrink back into himself, and he saw Red’s grip on his billy clubs tighten but Wade didn’t even flinch.   
  
“I said, are you saying you’re not going because you’re straight or ‘cause you don’t want to go due to crippling internalized homophobia?” Wade didn’t back down, keeping his sing-song tone of voice going. It made Frank grate his teeth in an attempt just to not sock him right then and there. Yet he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t let people in, and he sure as hell didn’t let Wade in on personal shit so how the fuck would he know what Frank would think or feel about what Wade just said.

“You’re a former military man Wade, you tell me what the answer is. You think a US Marine who was raised Catholic wouldn’t have some internalized homophobia?” He saw the expressions on all of their faces (well, masks mainly) rapidly change, but he wasn’t done. “But I’m not going because of that. You think that the Punisher would be welcomed there by the government or police? Yeah, didn’t think so.”   
  
Oddly enough, the kid was the first to speak. “Y-You’re not straight?” Frank understood the confusion, he had thought he was straight for a while too. Matt looked like he was still grappling for control of his words, and Wade was just silent. He wasn’t exactly what you would expect when you talked about someone being bisexual. Frank fell more along the lines of what a conservative dad wanted his son to be, but most people really didn’t know him, they only knew the Punisher from the headlines. 

“Yeah. Bisexual, like Karen,” He saw the kid’s face light up, and for once he didn’t seem like he was scared of Frank anymore. Wade had resided to laying on the room on his back, almost accepting his fate that he had been clapped back hard by Frank. Matt was still struggling but seemed to find them once the kid excitedly grabbed his forearm. 

“I think you should go, Frank,” Matt finally said, whatever mental gymnastics he had to talk himself through seemed to be over. “Karen would want you to go. You’d have to ditch your normal get up though,” Frank found himself starting to smile, just like two out of the three red-clad of his companions.    
  


“Eh, maybe. I’m a bit old for it,” Frank nudged Wade’s leg with his boot. “Get up. I’ll let you use my nice rifle if you do,” That got Wade up in under a second. He always liked to fiddle with it, and it frustrated Frank to no end, so it was the perfect incentive.   
  
“You’re not that old,” Matt pointed out. They were only a few years apart, but Frank was the elder of the two. In other situations, this age gap would be made fun of to call Frank a crotchety old man, but clearly not today. 

Frank shrugged in response. “Not really my speed,” In all honesty, he felt uncomfortable going on his own. He wouldn’t mind going with Karen, or even Red and Foggy, but on his own was out of the question. Also, the prospect of someone getting accidentally hurt at Pride because he decided to go, made his stomach churn. He probably was just going to get one of those flags and drink a shitty beer at his dingey apartment with Max in his lap. 

“If that isn’t your thing, you should join Karen, Foggy, and I for a drink at Josie’s. Karen and I can talk Foggy into it, actually, Karen will. He listens to her more as a voice of reason than me,”  _ And for good reason  _ went unsaid but it surely was meant to be there. The invitation was nice, Frank didn’t exactly have many friends due to his line of work, so he might take up the offer… 

  
“I might have to take you up on that Red, but first, looks like it’s time to take down a cartel,” He pointed to the now congregating group down below that thankfully hadn’t heard them. In record time, they grabbed what they needed, which included Frank reluctantly handing over his rifle to Wade. Then they were off, simultaneously beating the shit out of people while also accidentally getting their own shit kicked in (mainly just Matt). Frank found it oddly cathartic. He rarely talked about himself (talking to Karen when they were both drunk didn’t count), and to get something so heavy on his chest out in the open was… nice. Maybe he would do it again.  **Maybe.**


End file.
